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Favorite poem: Giant Saint Everything

GIANT SAINT EVERYTHING

August 06, 2005

There were days I wanted out. But then You would go and do things like dive into the Vancouver ocean, big brilliant cliché poem that You are, water rolling off Your back as You swam toward a sunset that hung like a sacred recipe painted all the way around Your holy head.

And then there were the ways You caught me moving back into my cave where the wheels turn, same wheels that drove You off. I should have told You before talking in terms of Forever that any given day wears me out and works me sour, that there are nights when the sky is so clear I stand obnoxious underneath it begging for the stars to shoot at me just so I can feel at Home.

What’s left of You now is a shrine built from the pieces I kept of Your presence, Your incredible stretch of presence. It sits in Our room like a sandpiper cross-legged and crying, remembering the night we met and the day You left, and the Light shifting in between. By the side of it stands a picture of the poem where I promised, “You will never have another lonely holiday.”

The words “I Promise” and “Forever” begged me not to use them but sometimes I don’t listen to God, so You can imagine how much it hurt to let Your last birthday pass with no word. August 3rd. You weren’t the only one comin’ up lonesome.

Listen, if I had to make a list of everything everywhere – and I mean everything… everywhere – the very last to-do on that infinite list of every – single – thing – would be – to hurt You, so I need You to know that in an attempt to keep my promise I did write a letter to You on Your birthday.

It was covered in stickers of flock-printed stars, choir claps, and a bonfire of buttercups stuck in the air, but when I finally drew enough courage to send You all the Love in the World my hand snapped off in the mailbox from clenching.

It was returned to me with a gospelstitch, a hope stamp and a note etched into the palm I had to pry open with the pressure of pitching doves reminding me we agreed to let each other go.

There is a point when tears don’t work to wash things away anymore. Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers. I miss You so much some days that I beg for the airplane to crash with just enough time in the freefall for scribbling “I Love You” across my chest. That way – when they find my burning breast plate – they will tell You how the very last thing I did with my life was call out Your name.

A. R. L.

I know You’re momma didn’t raise no sissy, so it’s best if I believe that You’ve bounced back and been born again, but in the bottom left corner of dreams in the dark spot where it gets windy and hollow I can still see you flailing, eating knuckle cake, full torque and tender, heart pounding from being pulled under, feet bleeding from bracing for endings, tongue dying to curse Forever because promises murder us backwards when people like me don’t keep them.

And sure, we all deserve absolution, but especially You. You and Faith, You’ve got the same hungerpunch, same song still rising off the watertrain running through the laws of a moon dead set on daylight digging marbles from the trees in a Love not scared to make no sense and monkey enough to see the same devastating reason for living this life My Giant Saint Everything

I promise You Forever these words have buckled my lips so far back to the beginning that I am now allowed only Today, so from my snap-chested heart spraying fully flying sending out the birds:

Today I stop believing in words. Today all my visions converted to blurs like the night We saw the Light and I could not shut up but I swear I was feelin’ silence.